


This Flailing Dance

by potolok



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Angst, Episode: s10e06 The Gang Misses the Boat, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Substance Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-26
Updated: 2018-02-26
Packaged: 2019-03-24 08:12:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13807137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/potolok/pseuds/potolok
Summary: Charlie has trouble translating his thoughts into words. Perhaps this time he won't need to.





	This Flailing Dance

Sometimes, when he’s huffed _just_ the right amount of glue and he’s scrubbing away at the bar’s toilets, his thoughts abandon their usual erratic paths, and they start flowing from one to the next, piecing together scraps of information that’s usually just scattered around various corners of his mind.

He’s been rubbing at the same spot on the floor for five minutes and he knows it’s clean, it must be sparkling at this point, but his eyes are defocused and his hand’s movements are willed by inertia more than himself, and there’s no one else at the bar who could come in and ask him what the hell’s taking so long, because it’s past 2 am now and they’ve all gone home, and Frank is probably banging someone or other, and that’s something Charlie does not want to witness. Besides, the repetition helps him concentrate; it clears his mind. He thinks of his mother and counts to three.

It’s been about a week since _it_ happened. And, as promised, everything was back to normal – they spat insults at each other and argued over dumb shit and plotted against people. The others didn’t as much as suspect anything, he was sure, both he and Dee had made sure of that by putting on shows of cruelty and cold indifference. But there _was_ something different, even though he gulped it down with a mouthful of beer every time it threatened to creep up his throat.

He wasn’t used to lying to his friends. Okay, sure, he had lied about having cancer – but that was something else. It had an end goal, it was supposed to serve a higher purpose, although it failed miserably. And, after all, it had been a blatant lie, easily revocable at any time. But this – this was different. It wasn’t a lie per se, it was just secret he couldn’t breathe a word about to anyone; and yet, as he swallowed down the words, he felt like the biggest liar there ever was, and he could feel the lie grow bigger every minute, and twice as fast under her eyes.

It’s fine, he thinks, they’re all liars. They all lie to others and to themselves – to prove their worth, to show off, to pull a scheme, to come out on top, and sometimes (just sometimes) to protect themselves, or rather their personas. And yet, this is different, because hiding it is denying it, and denying it is ending it, if there was ever anything that started. He hopes there is.

He keeps scrubbing the bathroom floor, and the burn seeping in his hand from the toxic detergent is almost welcome, because it keeps him grounded, doesn’t let him get tossed into the spiral that his mind morphs into sometimes. He’s thinking about grabbing a beer or two or maybe five and find some dubious substance that could possibly be inhaled and knock himself out before he slips into the downward spiral of all his darkest thoughts. But he doesn’t. He stops scrubbing at the floor; lowers himself to the ground; puts his elbows on his knees and his hands on his ears. This time, he thinks, he will be brave enough to let the spiral take him, because lately it’s been getting hard to live with himself and there are all these damned questions popping out of nowhere, as if Dee had flipped a switch inside his head when they–

Going down the spiral is a bit like being down in the sewers, because he never knows when it will happen, much like he can’t predict when the next water wall is going to come. But the water can be fended off; the spiral can’t. Being naked in the sewers feels liberating, because it’s a safe haven for people like him, who are comfortable with the dirt and the slime and the stench. The spiral brings about another kind of nakedness, which is not freeing, but shameful and pathetic. It is the nakedness of his soul, the one he usually forgets about and lives his life without acknowledging it, except in moments like these, when he feels it all at once.

There are so many questions. They overlap and interrupt themselves, they split each other down the middle and mash up together. The question marks dance around them, flashing before his eyes, hiding in the shadows until he can’t tell supposition from fact and fact from illusion. He tries to grasp at them, to form them into words, into sentences, but he can’t, he’s never learned how, so he grips at fractions of thoughts which he does not have the words for. He feels a sickness in his stomach and he knows those must be his feelings, because they always punch him in the stomach and then rise up, up, and out, and he is cleansed of them for another few months. This time, he tries to take the punch – and it hurts. He realizes there are a lot of things that hurt him. People poking fun at him because of his illiteracy hurts him, although he knows it’s true. Remembering his high school self, willing to degrade himself so he’d be liked by the popular kids hurts him, and it hurts him that he is much the same now. The spiders hurt him. Dee, with her blue eyes and sunny hair, with a beer in her hand and avoiding his eyes hurts him. The hands hurt him. Dennis and Mac hurt him, because if he hears them one more time calling her too fat, too bony, too ugly – he’ll smash their faces in. It is an ache tearing at his heart with nothing of the comfort and the complacency of his infatuation with the Waitress, so desirable in her unattainability, so safe in her refusal.

But this – this is something real, something he’s touched with his own hands and felt against his skin burning and hot and vivid and willing, but it’s fragile and he doesn’t know how to protect it, he’s too afraid to hold and nurture it for fear that he will shatter it, much like he does everything else. But he desperately, truthfully wants it to work, to mean _something_ in this world of rats and spiders and screaming alley cats. He wants Dee to look at him the way she did that night, soft and eager and a little embarrassed. He wants to apologize for calling her a bird, and tell her that if she really were a bird, she’d be a crow, because crows are _badass_ , but she’s not a bird. She’s his good friend who also happens to be quite good looking and who’s been making him feel goofy inside lately, like he wants to share all these weird and horrible thoughts with her instead of drowning them in beer and, when need calls for it, paint and other things even he’s surprised haven’t killed him yet. But that’s not who they are – they don’t _talk_ about their problems. They bury them deep, deep inside, where even they can’t reach them after a while, and where they are meant to rot until they’re gone.

But he knows that it will only rot them from the inside out.

 

“Charlie,” she’s saying. “Charlie, wake up, Jesus Christ. Come on, buddy, rise and shine.”

Charlie’s eyes flutter open to discover a slightly worried, slightly disgusted looking Dee hovering above him. He realizes that he’s strangely cold and can’t stop shivering, but his eyes are burning and he feels an overpowering urge to rub at them. He does so, colors dancing between his retinas and his closed eyelids, Dee’s voice continuing to call his name.

“God damn it, Dee, will you shut up? My head hurts like shit, give me a fucking break.”

“Charlie, what are you doing on the bathroom floor? Did you fall asleep in here?”

He looks around, now consciously analyzing his surroundings, and last night’s events come back to him. Oh God, the spiral. He feels sick.

“Yeah, must’ve,” he mutters and stumbles to his feet. His eyes meet Dee’s, which are holding an uncharacteristic softness to them.

“Hey, are you okay? You look terrible,” she says, and lightly touches his arm, as if she’s afraid he might lose his balance and fall to the floor.

“Yeah, I’m fine. See you later,” Charlie says, his eyes lazily shifting to the door before heading towards it. Dee’s gaze lingers on his turned back for a few seconds, before he leaves the bathroom and shuts the door behind him. She guiltily wonders what Charlie’s poisoned himself with this time and swallows the saliva gathering in her mouth at the realization that he’s seemed more disconnected than usual this past week, even in the rather rare moments he was sober.

Shit, she thinks. She’d pretty successfully managed to shove down the thoughts of their unusual encounter following the whole def poetry thing, and she’d hoped that Charlie would be able to do the same. It was pretty clear now that he wasn’t. God, she thinks, I hope he hasn’t caught _feelings_ for me or anything. It was strange – her stomach seemed to turn a little as the thought formed in her mind. It would just be somewhat flattering, she tells herself. The same way Cricket’s love for her had been flattering – empowering her, making her feel desired. That didn’t mean that _she_ wanted Cricket in any way. It was the same with Charlie.

It had to be the same.

 

Three days later, when he finally comes back to work, Dee almost feels like jumping from her chair to greet him with a hug. (She doesn’t. She spares him a glance and says ‘hey, Charlie’, then looks away.)

“Where the hell have you been, dude? This place is dirtier than ever,” Dennis complains.

As he and Charlie launch into an insult-filled argument on who should do the dirty work (they both know it will be Charlie), Dee steals occasional glances at the small man. He looks the same as ever – all soft hair and scratchy beard and freckled cheeks, his voice rising and scratching through the air. But she feels different about him. The few days that had passed without his company had been, at best, bleak. So when he finally relents to Dennis, putting his hands up in defeat and sighing a ‘fine, dude, whatever’, and he goes down to the basement, Dee gets up from her seat at the bar and follows him, scoffing at the curious eyebrow Dennis raises at her.

“Charlie?” she asks, “Is everything all right?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah. I just, uh, took a vacation. Yeah, that’s what I did.”

“Frank thought you were down with the flu,” she shots back, knowing he’s lying.

Charlie half laughs, half flinches. “I guess I didn’t feel so well. But anyway, I’m fine now, so.”

“Charlie, don’t you god damn lie to me. I saw you in that bathroom. What the hell’s up with you? And _don’t_ give me that bullshit, okay?”

He sighs. “I don’t know what to tell you, Dee, all right? I just… I got screwed up in the head for a few days, I worked out some stuff and now I’m fine and I’m back and I have to clean this shithole. Will you let me do my work?”

He’s angry now. He doesn’t want to talk to her.

She can feel the familiar sting of wanting to spit out insults and swear words on her tongue. She takes a deep breath and attempts to calm herself. She should give him a chance. The basement is dark and unwelcoming and there’s just the two of them. Kindness isn’t punished here, she reminds herself.

“Charlie, look, I think I know what’s bothering you. Forget about the damn work. I just feel like we should have this conversation and get it out of the way, you know?”

After glaring at her for a moment, Charlie sighs and his shoulders slump.

“Dee, I’ve been thinking about it and I, uh, it kind of… meant… something – to me. I think. I don’t know. I really tried to forget it never happened, but I just can’t. It’s too weird, man. Because we can’t like, do it again, but I don’t really regret it either. And I don’t know how you feel about it because you’re used to banging guys and then throwing them out the window the very next day and I don’t want to be the sentimental loser who’s all _cheesy_ and has _feelings_ and all that gross stuff and, I mean, you probably think it was a mistake anyway because who am I kidding, I don’t even know how to read, you’d never actually _be_ with me, like you know, how people are usually together, but god damn it, Dee, you fucked with my head!”

He covers his face with his hands as Dee just stares at him wide-eyed. She knew Charlie’s voice could reach insane heights, but she hasn’t heard it go _that_ high before. She carefully takes a few steps towards him until they are at an arm’s distance.

“Why…” her voice is small as she speaks, “Why couldn’t we do it again?”

His head shots up to look at her with big, blue-green eyes. She smiles awkwardly and tentatively opens her arms. Charlie melts into her as his head rests on her shoulder. His thoughts dance in a familiar spiral of jumbled words that he can’t make sense of, but he doesn’t try to.

He takes Dee’s hand and they dance with them.

 


End file.
